Chapter Text
They did it, they had made a good future.
Silver the Hedgehog was returning from his latest trip to the past, he had assisted Sonic and his friends one more time from the latest threat that had caused the destruction of his world. It was the usual routine: one day he would be in a brilliant future utopia, the next it was in ruins so he had to go back and fix it.
Go to Sonic for aid, find the root of the problem that was linked to the future wasteland, solve that problem, and go back to see if there was anything more to be done. But today, it was good, they had made it, the threat was defeated, and Silver had returned to his designated timeline.
He flew around with his ESP powers to explore the place he wasn't familiar with. The skyscrapers were huge, tall, complete and shared multiple bright colors with lights all around as well as a lot of green foliage on the ground and even in some of these buildings too. There were many trees all across the city and alongside the park. Silver decided to fly down to this park to take a more casual stroll and take in the life of the city. It was a lively plaza area; he remembered the layout, he had seen it once or twice before –although under a very different view– with people walking around, the flickies were chirping, and the city was thriving in peace. Silver had achieved it once again; the future was saved…
And that was pretty much it.
He saved the future, and people were living happily, but now he had to adapt to this whole new world. In fact, he was more knowledgeable of the world from the past because you couldn't know much from a world in ruins. And since he had spent much more time in the past then it was natural that he had more details of the timeline that wasn't his own. Nevertheless, it was never too late to learn about this world; it wouldn’t be the first time he had done it but it was tedious nonetheless.
He saw a teal glow coming from one of his golden bracelets. He looked at it weirdly; it had never done this before and the glow just kept pulsating over and over. He tapped it but that did nothing. He rubbed at the bracelet and that's when the magic started.
‘ Silver,’ said a female voice coming from nowhere, ‘ You’re not responding. ’
Silver looked all around frantically to see where the voice was coming from, but there was no one nearby or even someone who was staring at him from a distance.
‘Hello? ’ the voice called again.
"Um… hi?" he tried to play along and try to look knowledgeable
‘ Silver, it's me. We agreed to–,’ the speaker’s tone was somewhat frustrated. ‘It's okay, just turn on the holo, it's easier. ’
The holo… what holo? A hologram, was that like the name of the device or something he should know how to do already? And who was the voice talking to him? Silver looked at his bracelets trying to inspect what was this holo thing he was supposed to activate.
"Maybe we can do this in person, uh, if you want to?" he was taking too long.
‘ Um, alright, just come home before night and don't take too long. My test is next week, you said you were going to help me with it, okay…? See ya. ’
The transmission cut off, and Silver couldn't be more confused. Who was this person? Why did she act like that? But most importantly, she had mentioned coming home. Silver never had a home in the future, at least, not in this type of future. He always settled for a sort of outpost in one of the many broken buildings surrounded by rubble; that's what he could call home. But of course, if the future was changed then that meant his 'home' had changed too.
If that was the case, then did people change too? Maybe that's who the female voice was, a close friend or something like that who was currently at his “home”.
Now he was kinda curious as to what his home would be like in this new future, except that he really didn’t know where it could be. The best course of action was going to the familiar and safe, so he pressed onwards to the location where his old outpost usually was while doing some sightseeing of the city on his way through. There were many stores all around, like food and clothing. He was eager to explore these aspects that he had only experienced with his friends in the past. Was the food different? Had the fashion changed?
Eventually, the hedgehog reached the spot where his usual place was. He recognized the general exterior design of the building; it was one of the few buildings that remained partially standing, causing it to stand out compared to the rest, which were “built” completely out of rubble, and yes, it was a building. How he was going to enter was unknown but he soon found out he wasn’t going to need a key to enter, after all, facial recognition was a very common thing. Once he was close enough to the main entrance, he stared at the door looking for any point of access but the gates immediately opened with a low voice confirming his identity. A local guard was in a counter that also greeted him which basically proved he was heading in the right direction.
Inside, he headed for the elevator after a very slow walk as he glanced at some of the amenities the building was equipped with.
There was no need to push a button to call the elevator, the facial recognition loudly mentioned his name and brought down the elevator, so once inside, it took him to the right floor. Quite convenient for him because he definitely wasn't going to guess out of a hunch alone but at least he was sure this was his so-called home… there was just one missing step, the exact door. His floor had five other dorms, and naturally, only one of those was his place, and there was only one way to find out.
He approached one of them, ready to knock but there wasn't a need to. Once again, his face was enough to be recognized by the system… but a beep was produced, and the door didn’t open, pretty sure this wasn't his house. After a few seconds, a man opened the door, it was a black and yellow wolf.
"Hey, Silver! What brings you here?" he asked, leaning against the doorframe.
"Um, well, I think I mixed up the doors." He tried to play it off with an awkward laugh, but the wolf clearly noticed something else.
"Do you want to talk with Spark? He gets very excited when you visit."
He had no idea who Spark was.
"Maybe… some other day!"
"Okay then!" the wolf said. "Come visit us anytime, and I hope you find the right door!" he joked and Silver let out a chuckle. This wasn't going to be easy, his second attempt went similar, just the wrong person wondering what the neighbor wanted only to find out he had mixed up the locations and have everything remain as awkward as possible, a flawless strategy no doubt.
His third attempt was finally successful, his face was scanned, it then proceeded to ask for the thumbprint, for which he quickly took his gloves off for it and the entrance clicked . He had finally made it home. His heart raced as he slowly opened the door.
He was met with a lovely living room, the kind he wasn't familiar with but it was very sleek, blue lighting all around and it had some screens which were probably the equivalent of the TV, there was a table with four chairs of similar design and it even had a balcony. He wasn't able to take it in much further though because a female hedgehog came out from the kitchen which was adjacent to the living room.
"Look who's back!" she said, approaching Silver who instinctively took one step back but even that wasn't enough to stop him from receiving a big hug from this much taller hedgehog. When the hug was quickly broken, Silver remained there in awe, a teal and white hedgehog with a gorgeous cyan dress. "Hello~? Earth to Silver?"
"Right, yeah, I… am going to help with a test," he quickly remembered why he was there.
"Oh, yes, Gold, she's in her room."
Gold, so that was her name.
"Okay, I'll be right on it!" he was supposed to know these people, that hug was clear of it, and of course, he should have known already that he had agreed with Gold to help on her test, but it was happening so fast and he couldn't help it. These were all strangers, and he was starting to feel something was wrong.
He went to the hallway where he spotted a small-sized frame hung on the wall, it caught his attention because he was in it and featured three more people. It was him, and a hedgehog next to him, a girl with brown muzzle, long golden quills, and a clear brown dress adorned by light blue edges. She was the Gold he was talking with because, in this picture, there were also the two women and one of them he had just spoken to, the teal hedgehog, and another golden-brown tenrec.
It was a family portrait; this was his family. Gold was his sister, and the other two were their mothers.
"Honey, are you okay?" the teal hedgehog asked, coming from the living room, the suddenness of the question startled Silver, breaking him from the trance he was in as he stared at the frame quite intensively.
He didn't even know their names.
"I… am, I was checking this out," he said, returning to look at it.
"Alright," she chuckled. "Just let us know if you need help with anything, okay?"
Silver shared an awkward smile, but carried on instead, finding four more doors, one of them was the bathroom, another one was open which was what he assumed to be his room since the layout did resemble his usual outpost, and the other two were closed. He wasn't sure which one was which so he recreated his earlier tactic and chose randomly, opening one of the two and finding the brown-ish gold female tenrec he saw in the picture sitting in bed reading a book.
"Hey, son!" the woman called from the bed, and Silver waved from the door. "What took you so long?" The tone felt strong, almost like a scold.
"Um, just some…"
"Just messing with you!" She corrected her tone.
"Oh, wow, that's… great!"
"Is it? You look weird."
It was hard to judge his own expression; this was the last kind of scenario he was expecting to find himself in.
"Oh, it's just– lots of things,"
"Yeah, it's okay, you have a lot of things coming soon after all!" she said excitedly; Silver once again had no idea what was coming, but he was barely registering all this information at once. The detail that caught his attention was that this lady tenrec called him son, because even though he figured this out already, the confirmation of it was still hard to take in, no one had referred to him as that.
Silver nodded in a very polite manner, he took one last glimpse at the tenrec before heading to the final room to explore, which was Gold's bedroom. When he reached the place, he found her sitting at her table with some notebooks and books scattered around the bed, a very cheerful closet, and–.
"Silver…" Gold groaned. "What happened? You said you were coming earlier today."
"Sorry, I got caught up… Gold," he said as if confirming the name “I just have a lot coming soon,” or so he was told.
"Yeah, I could see that, and what was that all about? I thought we agreed to communicate via telepathy; how far were you anyway?"
"Couple of blocks or so?"
"Huh, I'm getting better."
"Sorry, I kinda– forgot to do the holo thing." There was nothing else he could say. With a sigh, Gold decided to teach him, she swiped a small portion of the golden bracelets she was wearing and did the same for Silver's and a copy of themselves appeared in front of them, intangible and somewhat transparent, but there, it copied all their movements, which Silver found very surprising.
"What's with the big mouth? You act like it's the first time you've seen it."
Because it was.
"You have a test?" Silver was now curious as to what this whole lesson was about.
"You really forgot about it?" Silver didn't reply, he had apparently forgotten about many things that he wasn't sure how he was going to explain this. Gold sighed, "I failed, Silver! Next week’s the last do-over I can get– you were always good when it came to history, that’s the one I need help with."
"Oh, high school, right…" he repeated to get some information without coming off as clueless.
"College, Silver," she corrected him. "You're the one who's starting high school, or what? Did you forget that too?"
"Ha! High school? No, I didn't forget that's… next week," he tried not to ask the question, and make it more natural but it was becoming more difficult with each piece of information. He had to reveal it as soon as possible but this had to be taken slowly, especially because he didn't know what was more shocking, the fact that he was supposedly going to high school or that Gold was his older sister.
"I can help in history, yeah." Silver tried to focus on the task at hand, but he wasn't expecting which topic exactly until he sat down on the bed and took a look at the books lying around.
An extensive history of the XXI century and the full biography of Sonic the Hedgehog.
Silver picked it up and started frantically looking through the page, skimming through the pictures, the adventures, the wars, pieces of text; for the first time it truly registered to him what living 200 years into the future meant, it was clear that they were passed away, all of them were, probably by 100 years or so.
"Silver, are you okay?" Gold asked.
"N-No…" he couldn't hide it anymore. "I can't do this, Gold, I'm sorry."
He didn't run away from the room, he just remained sitting on the bed while looking at the book. Gold eased up on her frustration to sit next to him.
"What’s happening?"
Silver stared into her eyes and everything felt wrong, this had never happened before. He had never had a family in the future, let alone one with a sister and two mothers. Maybe there was one or two people he was expected to know –like that so-called Spark– but not to this extreme, and it wasn't fair to them. It wasn't fair that he couldn't name his moms or that he forgot that Gold needed help in history; a history he wasn't even familiar with no less because he didn’t know Sonic’s life.
But there wasn't time to explain, he opened up his mouth weakly to say something when he heard their names being called from the living room. Lunch was ready, and they had to attend.
"Save it for later," Gold reassured, it was time for a meal.
A meal that didn't help in what he was feeling at all, it was a casual lunch with nothing special except some chatter among their two mothers, which of course, Gold contributed. Silver just politely and silently ate the meal that was lovingly prepared and aside from some detached comments here and there, there wasn't much engagement on his part.
The mothers glanced at Gold to figure out what was happening with him, but she could only shrug.
Once he finished, Silver retreated to his very well-adorned room. It had computers, a closet, some little merchandise and nothing out of the ordinary that a teenager his age wouldn’t have.
He dropped onto the bed and pulled out the Time Stone he was carrying.
The Time Stone, the single item he had used countless times in his journeys through time. Maybe it was his constant travels that had caused this. Why he couldn't remember, why he always woke up and the world was always destroyed except for him, why his experiences of the past meant everything to him.
And why this didn't feel like his family at all.
"Hey there, Sylvie." a voice came from the door. He quickly hid the stone and sat back up; it was his tenrec mother who sat next to him on the bed.
"Um, hey… Sylvie?" he was surprised by the nickname.
"Sorry! I just– can't believe my boy is growing up so fast. You're going to high school, you're gonna make some new friends, it's a very confusing stage, Silver, I know." She placed a hand on his shoulder, "And we're here for you, okay?"
She smiled and Silver let out a soft smile back. His mother closed out the conversation with a soft but deep side-hug before leaving the room.
He wanted to say thanks, but the words didn't come out in time, and once she left and closed the door, Silver returned to his thoughts with the gem he possessed.
Watching this motherly love was sweet but how long until it all went away? Maybe there wasn't going to be a high school next week, it could easily be on fire or reduced to rubble, or underwater or completely lifeless, or any other type of post-apocalyptic scenario he was facing at the moment, none of it ever lasted. He was always going back, and being thrown into the future with a family this complete was inexplicably scary.
Maybe this wasn't the place he was meant to be, the family he knew was with Blaze, Espio, even Sonic despite how overbearing he could get sometimes.
Maybe they could give him some comfort. Maybe that’s how he could set things right.
He got up from the bed and held the stone firmly, getting ready to use it yet once again.
"Chronos Control!" The magic words to activate the time travel mechanic, and it was just the time Gold chose to enter the room.
"Silver, do you– what?!" She was not expecting this image.
"Agh! Gold, this isn't what you think!" and he wasn’t expecting her.
"Is that a Chaos Emerald?!" That was her best guess, she approached to take a better look but the Chronos Control process had already started and both of them were engulfed by the Time Stone, taking them right where Silver wished to.
The past.